Warm Shadow
by Rebellwithoutacause
Summary: "He wanted to say something to bring her around, to force her to keep moving. He wanted to make her tears stop. He didn't want her to hurt, but he had nothing left to give. She finally stared at him, tears streaking down her face as the pain of everything that they'd been through finally slammed her all at once." Explores the Daryl and Beth part of "Inmates" R&R if you please!


_**Ok guys. I just couldn't help it. I sacrificed sleep to write this fic because my feels were hurting so bad in the first part of this episode. I hope you guys enjoy. I guess you could say this is in the same arc as my 'Mortal Endurance' story, but I didn't add it as a second chapter because I felt like it would have been too disjointed. This is obviously my interpretation about what we did, and didn't, see on camera in tonight's episode. Hope you guys enjoy, as always, reviews are love! **_

**_Warnings: Spoilers for the episode "Inmates" that premiered tonight, 02/17/2014. Also, rating due to a few incarnations of four letter words. _**

**_Disclaimer: If I owned the Walking Dead things would go sooooo much differently, let's just say that. _**

* * *

"Faith? Faith ain't done shit for us. Sure as hell didn't do nothin' for your father."

That was the last thing he'd said to her. Out in the woods, surrounded by scrub and probably Walkers too if he had to bet. He regretted it the moment the words had left his teeth but he hadn't stuttered. Maybe, before, he would have looked her in the eye and actually managed to force his tongue to say he was sorry. He was sorry. He hadn't meant to hurt her, not like that. But he just couldn't. Because no matter how much he hadn't meant his words to cut her, they were the truth, and it was too much to keep entirely to himself.

She'd glared at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, so bright and clear and hard and full of disgust for what he had just done. He'd never been a coward, he'd never shied away from the looks people shot him. All his life people had stared at him just like she was looking at him now. Like they couldn't believe he even existed. Like he had the balls to stand there and bitch slap them with the truth.

_Some things never change…_

She stormed past him, her fingers clenched tight around the knife that was absurdly large in her small hand. Still, she'd put down that Walker without much trouble, and others to, she'd learned the weapon well. He knew in part was because she'd been watching him. Watching the way his fingers curled around the handle, the way he would twist and stab the blade through the air, reaching for a Walker skull. He liked thinking he'd done something for her to help her survive. At one time that thought might have made him feel a little bit warmer inside, but now…now all he could feel was nothingness. Just numb. He wasn't even cold inside. Just dead.

When they'd found the pack of Walkers at the tracks and they'd both seen that some of them had been people they used to know, it hadn't really registered with him. It was just more horror, more blood, more broken bones, more guts, tacked on to a pile that was already so high he was pretty sure he could climb it all the way to the moon by now. It didn't make him feel anything. All he felt was exhausted. Mentally, physically, everything in him just wanted to lay down and never move again. He killed the pack while Beth stood behind him, terrified and grief stricken. He heard her sobbing, the sound of her whimpering rattling something in between his ears. That sound was supposed to mean something to him.

He vaguely remembered weeks ago when he'd come back to the cell block and went to find Beth to tell her that the kid she'd been hanging around with was dead. Zack had been his name. He hadn't actually been able to say the words, just the boy's name, and he assumed that the expression on his face had done the rest. He had braced for the sounds she was letting out now. Her desperate cries, pleading with a cruel, ruthless world to return to her those she had lost. In the prison he had almost wanted to hear those sounds, to know she still felt something, that she wasn't becoming a mindless machine like Carl. She had maintained most of her composure, but she'd clutched him tightly, a few damp tears staining his chest as she struggled to get herself together. At first her touch had unnerved him, but some human instinct buried deep underneath all the scar tissue had realized that this was what humans did when they hurt. They reached for comfort from others when they couldn't quiet their pain on their own.

Maybe that was why he had lashed out at her in such a passive aggressive way. Maybe he was warning her away from reaching for him. It made him feel pathetic and so much less than the man he had hoped he could be to push her away like that, but if he was being truly honest with himself, he didn't have it in him to comfort her. Not now. Maybe never again. Everything that mattered, everything that had made his entire existence worth having, was gone. All he had was her, a living, breathing, thorn in his side remembrance of a man who had saved his life, a caretaker for their only piece of innocence left, someone who had given up on everything and fought her way back. A reflection of everything that he'd lost.

His back was to her as he heard her crying. His feet were on the tracks, his crossbow in his hand, his shoulders knotted up with tension. His posture was screaming what he so badly wanted to say.

_"This is what you asked for, dumb girl! You wanted me to track 'em down, well I did, and I coulda told ya this was all you was ever gonna find! They're fucking dead! It's over! They're dead!" _

But no matter how much the pain, he was a better man than that. He had to be. The world had taken everything away, had plunged its clawed hand right through the skin, muscle, and bone, curled it's sharp, bony fingers around his heart, and ripped it clean out of his chest, but there was some piece of it left inside him. Just enough to hold back those awful words.

He forced himself to turn and look at her. He wanted to say something, something soft, to bring her around, to force her to keep moving. He wanted to make her tears stop. He didn't want her to hurt, but he had nothing left to give. She finally stared at him, tears streaking down her face as the pain of everything that they'd been through finally slammed her all at once and she just kept crying, her whole body seizing up into one stiff, tear soaked knot. All he could manage was to tip his head to the side, silently telling her to come with him.

When she didn't move he started walking. It wasn't his own body controlling his limbs anymore. Something else had a hold of him. Some blind instinct, a chemical autopilot, something else was making him move; the same way he used to feel the few times he'd experimented with Merle's drugs. He never liked feeling like he wasn't in control of himself. It was the only real power he'd ever had in his life, and he wasn't about to give it away to some dumb rock or a couple pinches of powder. For Merle the pay off of the high had been enough, but not for Daryl. Maybe because even the drugs weren't strong enough to burn away the fear he always felt inside. The fear that something was always around the corner, something was going to sneak up behind him at the last moment and bust his skull clean open so he could watch his brains and pieces of his face spatter on the ground. He supposed he maybe had a right to feel like that, anybody who lived with a man like his father would learn to walk their whole life on eggshells that were invisible to the world.

But when he didn't hear her following after him he turned back. The sound of her sobs were quieter now but she was still sniffling, still staring at the bodies twisted and laid out on the ground, guts and brains lolling out on the dirt. He had to swallow a couple times before he managed to find his voice, but all that came out was a rasping sound that was barely anything like her name.

Still she looked up. She stared at him, her blue eyes red and raw from crying but a steely look of anger etching its way onto her face. "Don't you feel anything?" she yelled at him. "Look at this! We knew them! How can you just walk away from them like this?"

He could feel his head hanging. It was a wonder his entire spine didn't bend forward with the weight of the pressure and the pain all of a sudden hitting him. He felt so ashamed of himself and he couldn't even understand why. A miserable wash of feelings rose up in him and he couldn't decide whether this was better or worse than feeling numb.

"We have to go," he managed to say. He forced himself to look up and stare at her in the eye this time. He hoped that his eyes could tell her all the things he was feeling, because God only knew if he tried to actually say the words he knew he would break. He was barely hanging on as it was, and every moment that passed made it feel like the thin string he was holding onto was slipping out of his fingers. He was struggling to hold on, to find some reason to put one foot in front of the other. He didn't know what the point was anymore, and slowly but surely the numb sensation stole back into him and killed the roiled tangle of bone crushing pain inside him.

He turned and walked away and this time he heard her following. She picked up the pace and stormed ahead of him, forcibly shoving herself out in front. He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd tried to punch him. He might have even deserved it. But the whole rest of the day he kept his eye on her, making sure she didn't wander off or disappear. When they made camp for the night he watched her rip many pages out of her diary and throw it into the fire.

"You know I wanted to give up once too," she said quietly after so many minutes that it almost startled Daryl out of his stupor. "Not long after this started."

He didn't answer her or look up, but he remembered oh so clearly what had happened. Her ma had come staggering out of that barn along with a small herd of other Walkers, right along with Sophia and all their hopes at salvaging a mother's breaking heart. He remembered dragging all his things as far away from the house as he could, determined to put some distance between them and their emotional wounds, not caring if he was damning himself to never really knowing what it might be like to be human so long as he didn't have to deal with the pain of knowing he'd failed. Until Lori had come stalking up towards him, a sarcastic sneer in her first words and then a desperate plea to find Hershel and Rick. He had angrily sent her away, refusing to help, refusing to get sucked up in yet another fucking tragedy.

"I got really close, too," she continued. "I broke the mirror and cut myself. I just wanted it to end. I didn't see a way out. So many people I loved were gone. Nothing normal was ever coming back. I didn't want to fight for it anymore. I thought it was too hard and that I'd never get any stronger."

He could feel her staring at him. She wanted him to look at her, she wanted him to see what she was feeling. His internal safeguards warned him not to look or she'd start to chip away at the barrier between him and so much pain he couldn't cope with it. He kept his eyes on the fire but he couldn't block out her voice.

"But when I thought I really was dying, all I could think was that I wanted to live. How much Daddy and Maggie and Jimmy meant to me. How stupid I was for frightening them. How much I really didn't want everything to end. And I decided then that no matter what, I'd fight for it. I'd fight for my life. I couldn't just sit there and die, not when so many other people around me were fighting for so much less."

He heard her moving and that forced him to look up. She crossed the space between them, going around the fire, and sat down right next to him. He wanted to tell her to back off, to let him be, to just get away, but he couldn't get the words out.

"Don't tell me you're giving up now," she whispered.

Now he did stare her in the face. She was almost shaking but he could see the determination etched in every one of her features. "You can't give up now," she breathed. "You've been through so much worse…Daryl…"

"Don't," he growled. He couldn't hide the threat in his voice. "Don't, Beth."

"Don't do what?" she snapped. "Don't remind you of what you're really capable of? So you can keep feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Don't talk about what you don't know!" His teeth were biting every syllable and now he got up to his feet to move further away from her but she just jerked up right along with him.

"I know plenty!" she barked. "I know what people like your family did to you! I know why you wanted to bring Sophia back so bad. Why Judith means so much to you! You think you're so closed off, that nobody can read you, that nobody understands." She huffed at him, her eyes narrowing sharply. "I've known you for a long time, Daryl. I know more than you think I do."

She stalked towards him now, getting right into his face. "I know what you really can do. I know who you really are. Did you know I was the only one who was pissed enough at you to actually say that I was mad when you took off with Merle? Sure, Glenn was all in a rage, but not because of you. No, I was the only one who was actually mad at _you._" She stabbed him in the chest with a sharp finger, her eyes like frozen stiletto blades. "And I was mad because you up and left us! You left us, betrayed us, and yourself, for a man who had never done anything but hurt you!" She crossed her arms over her chest and exhaled sharply as if loosening some of the anger in her throat.

"But you came back. Just like I knew you would. Because you really are a good man, and you know what's right. You know who your real family is. You fought for what mattered then." She let her arms drop to her sides slowly as her expression began to morph from anger and pain into almost desperation. "Nobody is strong enough on their own. Not even you. And there's nothing wrong with that." She reached down for her arm and unclipped the cuffs of her bracelets off her wrist and stuffed them in her pocket before thrusting her arm almost under his nose, the pale, white shine of her scar completely visible in the firelight.

"We've all wanted to give up. But we just can't. What you've been through, where you've come from and where you managed to get to, it's just proof of what you're really capable of. And not just to me, but to everybody else too, even yourself." She lowered her arm but not her eyes. "That's why you can't say anything. Cause you want to give up, but you're ashamed of it. Because you know that you're a fighter. That it's not in you to quit. That giving up isn't an option."

"What's the point, Beth?" he asked listlessly. "They're gone. All of them. Your dad, Rick, Carl, Judith, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn, Tyreese, Sasha, everybody. They're gone. We'll probably never see any of them ever again."

There. He'd said it. He'd said his worst fear. Losing everybody that he loved. He had never believed that he'd had room in his heart for so many people, but now that he had, all their names were strangling him. And the one name he didn't say, the woman he'd fought so hard to save, the one he was beginning to suspect he'd lost the day Sophia had staggered out of the barn, the one that maybe meant the most to him, he just couldn't tell Beth what she'd done. How far she'd gone. The depth of his failure to save the person she had once been.

Beth shuddered, maybe at the sound of their names, maybe at the feeling those names brought about. Either way, it took her a minute to get a grip on herself and find her words, but when she did, she wasn't shaking.

"The point is we can't give up. Not until we see their bodies. Until we know they're really gone, we've got something to hang on to. Something to fight for."

"And when we find them? When they're staggering around as stiffs who will try to rip you to pieces?" The feeling of his dead brother walking pushing against him in a never ending quest for fresh meat rang so hard inside his skull, like a hammer hitting a gong.

"Then we end their pain. We bury them like they deserve. And we go on. We go on because they would want us to. Because they'd die to save us without being asked. Because they'd be willing to trade their lives to make sure we kept living."

She paused and took a step closer to him again. He flinched at her motion when she reached her hand out, but she didn't let that stop her. Her palm, cool and smooth and gentle, pressed against his cheek and softly turned his head to face her. "When the Governor took you hostage, Rick and Maggie went to get you back. They risked their lives to rescue you. They knew they could have been killed. They didn't ask. They didn't have to be ordered. They went because you mean something to them." Her fingertips brushed his hairline and he could see the crystal tears welling at the edges of her eyes. His heart was trying so hard just to stop beating inside his chest. He didn't want to hear anymore. He couldn't take it, but when he tried to pull away her other hand flashed out and grabbed hold of his wrist and forced him to stay.

"If we're all that's left of anything good, we have to keep going. For their memory. Because they would have wanted us to. Because to them going on was worth dying for." Her fingers tightened on his wrist and now she pulled herself into his chest and buried herself against him, the warmth of her body flushing through his, spilling life and all things worth living for back into his skin, like a breath of the cleanest air in the world after being held under water so long he was certain he'd drown.

"Because if you give up, I will too," she whispered. She trembled against him, and now when he looked down he saw she couldn't look up. The top of her head was shivering slightly as she held onto him.

He didn't want it to happen. He didn't want her to be able to do this to him. He wanted to just go back to being alone, to not having to feel or think or be responsible for anybody but himself. It had always been so much easier that way, and nobody ever had to know how pathetic it all really was. But now he couldn't go back. He could never go back to that part of himself anymore. He had irrevocably changed. The pain that was still rocking through him was so strong he couldn't contain it any longer. Unbidden and without his consent his arms came up and around Beth and pulled her tightly into his chest. True though he may have been holding onto her, she was holding onto him just as fiercely. Together they were the only things keeping themselves upright and contained, safe from shattering into a million fractured pieces, never to be whole again. She'd broken through the wall, she'd forced her way inside. She'd exposed him to the stabbing pain of everything they'd both lost in the past few hours that he really didn't know if he could take it. He clutched her so hard he was sure he was hurting her, but he felt like if he let go he would collapse. All he could do was just feel. Just feel wave after wave of wracking sadness, emptiness, grief, and sheer loss. It was so much more than he knew what to do with, so overwhelming he didn't even realize he was crying until he felt the sting of his tears and the growing dampness of her hair as he pressed his cheek into the ground of her head.

He held onto her until he had nothing left in him to give. He was sure that the feelings would be back, but somehow, as she continued to squeeze his body and hold him firmly, he felt grounded to the earth. Like he really did have something real, something that was worth feeling all of this for. He still felt exhausted and completely carved to pieces, but somehow, his instincts told him that the worst had passed. That somehow, this little scrap of blonde hair, pale skin, and searing blue eyes had managed to bring him out of the warm shadows that would have been his death shroud. Somehow, the warmth in her managed to burn away everything else.

"Ain't gonna happen, Beth."

His words were rough and grated when he spoke; her face was still tucked into his chest so he couldn't be sure, but if he had to bet, that despite the hoarseness in his throat, she smiled.


End file.
